The U2/Julie Taymor Spider-Man musical, Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, has been running in preview showings for about two weeks now with generally mixed reactions. Most people who’ve seen the show, which wasn’t set to officially open until January 11, agreed it had some major story problems but was visually stunning. For a musical that cost $65 million, even a small problem is bad news so the New York Times is reporting the opening of the show will now be delayed for the fourth time.

Producers feel pushing the opening back to February will “provide more time for the creators to stage a new final number, make further rewrites to the dialogue and consider adding and cutting scenes and perhaps inserting new music from the composers, U2’s Bono and the Edge, who will resume working full-time on the show in late December.” Read more after the jump.

On Broadway, reviews are everything, and Taymor and company need the show to be at its absolute best once critics get a chance to see it the week before the opening. Apparently, they took to heart all the unofficial reviews that hit the Net once the previews started and have decided that the second act, which is where the show strays from the classic Spider-Man mythology, is unclear and needs to be tinkered with.

According to the New York Times source, Taymor has been changing dialogue almost every single performance to try and clarify what is going on in addition to adding new stunts and effects. Plus, with Bono and The Edge having been on tour with U2, they have yet to see a finished version of the show but will become “regular presences” at the theater once the tour is over so they can help out with the show they’ve been working on for almost a decade.

From all the visuals we’ve seen from the show, both on 60 Minutes and in Vanity Fair, plus with the incredible wealth of Spider-Man history there is to draw on, I’m really pulling for Turn Off The Dark to be a hit. However, it’s going to be a real feat to fix things in the next few weeks that weren’t fixed over the course of several years.

Have any of you seen the show in previews? Do you have tickets? Do you think this delay will provide enough time to fix any issues the show has?